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8 September 2018

Blogging isn't a business for me, and I'm (finally) okay with that

I've been struggling with the world of blogging for a few months now, and it really boils down to one thing: I stopped writing because I was passionate and got into this mindset of 'wow I want to be the next Hannah Gale' (no shade to her, because she is my QUEEN). And I mean, it's great to have goals, but I spent a whole lot of time thinking about my blog as a business: focusing on the numbers (and nothing else), looking for ways to make money, and trying to work out best how to market it.

You see there was one big problem with that: my blog isn't profitable, and it's not a blog with a big following. I was never under the illusion that I had this massive backing, or that I could make it in the big leagues, but my mindset switched to thinking about my blog as a way to make money, not something I do for fun.

Soon I wasn't posting as much, I pretty much stopped engaging with anyone on any platform, and thinking up new post ideas became an absolute drain. By treating my blog as work I (surprise, surprise), sucked the fun out of it. Social media became a place for the jealousy in me to bubble up to the surface, and so I distanced myself from it. Over the months that I felt this way, I posted less frequently on my blogthan I ever have before, my growth massively slowed and I became more and more frustrated.

It took everything going downhill like this to make me sit back and have a tough conversation with myself: my blog is probably never going to make any money. It feels weird to write this down, because I've always had some wild conviction that somewhere down the line a post will get noticed, or a brand will notice me, or something will happen to make my tiny corner of the internet a little bigger. But realistically this isn't going to happen. Accepting this has been a little odd, because I'm sure when we all got into blogging we thought 'one day' things will come through financially.

Now I've reached the point where I'm okay with it all, and it's been so freeing. I'm going back to posting content I want to write, not things that might catch someone's eye. I'm engaging on twitter and Insta again because I'm not spending all of my time wondering how everyone else is three steps ahead of me. Basically, I'm blogging for all the reasons I started blogging, and I'm hoping that the rest of this year is going to see me in a much happier place with my blog as a result.

4 comments:

This post was so refreshing! Obviously it's fine if people do want to aim to make money from blogging, but I think lately people have been seeing this as a reason to start, which is a little uneasy for me. It's nice to remember why we started.

Great to hear! I’ve never been offered sponsored posts, just affiliate links where I’d earn a little if some items in the post were sold. I turn them down and say I don’t want to bring money into it as I enjoy it too much as a hobby. When your blog feels like YOUR blog and something that will always be there for you, it’s wonderful isn’t it? :0)

Thank you! I have recently backed away from my ‘business’ because it was truly going nowhere. i actually deleted Facebook! (What?) Yeah, I did. Great post! I know things will move along in their own time for us.

Such an honest post! I had this realization at the start of the year, and thought I have a sponsored post here and there from a company now and then - it's not enough to live off forever! I'm trying to get back to blogging about what I want to write about - like back when I first started and didn't know people actually read them! :) Tania Michele xx

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